As parents, we suffer all our children's cuts and bruises, but we also can rejoice in their accomplishments, both large and small. When my oldest son was in the early stages of grammar school, he started having some learning issues. At the time, I knew I was by no means qualified to determine if my own son indeed had a learning disability, so I went ahead and had the school schedule an evaluation. At the same time, I feared the school had jumped too quickly to wanting to label him with a learning disability, so I sat down with my son to see if I could get a sense of what he was having trouble with. So here I am, trying to see if I can get a better understanding of what my son is struggling with, and to my shock and surprise, I realized that he did not know all his letters. In other words, at the time, my son couldn’t recognize all the letters in the alphabet, and the school was complaining that he wasn’t reading at grade level! I’m not an educator, but I couldn’t understand how they could expect him to be reading at grade level, when he wasn’t even fluent with the alphabet. At the time, I was also kind of shocked because they should have been concerned that he didn’t know his alphabet. Instead, they were expecting him to be reading, when he didn’t even know the letters? The internet was in its nascent stages and I was able to do some research. I stumbled across the whole debate of phonics vs. sight reading. I also found a great book: Why Johnny Can't Read?: And What You Can Do About It, by Rudolf Flesch. The book covers the phonics vs. sight reading debate in exhaustive detail and includes an appendix with “flash cards” that you can use to teach your own child to read. So with the learning disability evaluation scheduled 3 weeks out, I sat down with my son and started to teach him how to read. 3 weeks later, he knew his alphabet and was sounding out multisyllabic words. When the time came for the learning disability testing, he was found not to have a learning disability. There is no doubt in my mind, that had I not spent this time with him, there is a high likelihood that they would have found that he did indeed have a learning disability. For a while, I was worried that maybe I had somehow shortchanged him, and had I not tutored him prior to the testing, he might have been found to be learning disabled and gotten additional help and attention. I'll never really know the answer to that question, but he’s a grown man now, and while he never was a big fan of school, he devours huge technical tomes on computers and can build them, fix them and make them sing and dance (computers that is). So, while I get that smart people (like my son) can have learning disabilities, I don't regret helping him when I did. He needed to know how to read, and somebody had to care enough to take the time to teach him. This experience inspired me to use the “Johnny book” with my 3 other children as well. So, on each of their 4th birthdays, I sat down with them and taught them how to read. As a self-proclaimed bibliophile, there is no greater pleasure than knowing that you have given your child the gift of reading! If you’re interested in teaching your kids how to read, in a later post, I’ll go through the process I used, and offer some of the things that I learned. You can start by getting and reading the book. I’ll offer a word of caution right from the get-go, if you’re not able to be patient and gentle and slow, don’t try this at home, as you don’t want your child to learn to hate reading. Having said that, if I can do it, you can do it.